The resonator fiber optic gyroscope (RFOG) has shown promise in meeting the needs of many navigation and inertial stabilization markets. Prior art teaches an RFOG design using the gyro resonator as a reference resonator to stabilize a master laser, and then the master laser stability is transferred to slave lasers using high speed optical phase lock loops. The reduced phase noise relative to the gyro resonator improves RFOG performance. A disadvantage of this approach is that the master laser beam must co-propagate with one of the slave laser beams used for rotation sensing. The beating between these two beams can cause rotation sensing errors and/or greatly increase the complexity of the design.
Prior approaches have employed a reference resonator to stabilize the master laser. Even though this method eliminates the problem with co-propagating beams, it has a disadvantage in that the reference resonator operating parameters do not track the gyro resonator over operating temperature. This is a serious issue for applications that require gyros without temperature control.